My Musings

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Monday, September 27, 2004

My Humble Beginnings as a Crack Reporter

A few days ago the Carlton Complex Council sent out a mass email saying it was looking for someone to report on CCC events. I eagerly replied, dizzy with glorious visions of daring reporting and being published. Even though my writing would probably take up a fingernail-sized square in some newsletter that nobody ever reads, I was nevertheless convinced that this small step was to be the takeoff point for my breezy, carefree flight to journalistic fame and glory. Judging by the enthusiastic response I received from Melinda, the Assistant Second Year Coordinator, I was the only person who expressed interest in the job, which was good, because otherwise there may have been some sort of selection process and the CCC people would have realized I’m an incompetent idiot.

The first event I covered was the Race at Case window painting contest. In case you didn’t know, Case is hosting the vice presidential debates this year so that we can finally have something to advertise and maybe actually convince a few people to come here (previously the top ad slogan anybody could come up with was, “Case: the only university where you download porn off the network at 15 megabytes per second.”) The point of the window paintings was to depict a race between a donkey (the symbol of the democratic party) and an elephant (the symbol of fat), creating an obvious allusion to the famous fable wherein a hare, overconfident in his ability to beat a tortoise in a race, takes a McDonald’s lunch break midway through the course and chokes to death on a chicken head uncovered in one of his McNuggets. The Donkey vs. Elephant race, I imagine, follows along somewhat dissimilar lines; the donkey, upon losing, demands numerous reviews of the instant replay footage, and when they confirm his loss, blames his defeat on the faulty camera.

Michelson, the dorm I live in, and therefore clearly the coolest dorm in existence, at least until it’s torn down next year, had to paint the start of the race; Glazer, the middle; and Kusch, the finish. Michelson had its painting session on Saturday, Glazer on Sunday, and Kusch on Monday, evidently so that people could participate in all three, although no one is really sure why anybody would want to. I came to the third and last session to get the complete scoop on the event.

When I arrived at Kusch at 8:30 for their window painting event, I raised the total population present by 25%. (Futile attempts to raise attendance were made throughout the course of the evening by offering free Chinese food to hapless passerby.) Seconds after making my acquaintance, the president offered me encouraging advice that would later be of great benefit to me in my journalistic endeavors: “You suck, jackass.” His name was Jeff. The other power players at this big bonanza were Evan, the vice president, whose primary function was, as I understood it, to crack jokes; Mandy, the somebody or other, whose primary function was to say stupid things for Jeff to crack jokes on; and some other girl whose name and position I probably would have ascertained if I had any journalistic skill whatsoever.

I learned that the winner of the window-painting contest will be decided the weekend before the highly-hyped debate. Decided by whom, I do not know; possibly squirrels. In any event, the winning dorm will receive a modest monetary prize and then, according to Mandy, “do absolutely nothing with it.”

Mandy was tasked with painting a grandstand with “VOTE!” in big letters swathed across it. The people in the grandstand, presumably spectators of the race, constituted a diverse crowd representing all the major ethnic groups of the world: black people, brown people, and red people. Mandy’s beautiful rendition of the scene was marred slightly by the eventual realization that she, despite being an English major and therefore theoretically having a solid grasp on how the English language works, had forgotten to account for the fact that letters from outside will be seen in reverse; hence, the painting’s viewers would see ETOV (with the E flipped). Evan chided her silly error and there followed a heated argument as to whether or not Norton or Raymond had prettier pictures for the window painting contest last year. Although the argument did not reach a satisfying conclusion while I was there, I can assure you without any doubt that by far the best window paintings were, in fact, at my dorm Tyler.

I myself am not an artistic person, so the fine art of window painting was completely beyond me. A critical element of the process, I found out, was attacking the size of Evan’s penis. In his defense Evan asserted, “I really do have a small penis. Mandy’s seen it twice.” There was then a discussion among the group’s two other members regarding the validity of Evan’s claim that Mandy had seen his penis. Having known Mandy and Evan for approximately five minutes at the time, I could not say whether Mandy had or had not seen the goods, but she did drop her fortune cookie in the paint.

Although the turnout at the Kusch painting session was small, Evan claimed that at one of the other buildings there were as many as ten people. When asked about the large variation between other buildings’ attendance and hers, Mandy explained that it was “because people in those buildings actually care.”

Window painting is a very difficult and imprecise art form, so I am certain that it was not for any lack of artistic talent that the Kusch elephant looked like a giant toxic smog cloud with a potbelly. The donkey, whose hind legs and greater majority of upper body had been engulfed by the toxic elephant, had ears that looked suspiciously like the kind of horns you would expect to see on Satan. I am guessing the members of Kusch do not particularly care for either political party.

One side of the Glazer building shows the elephant lumbering up the aptly named Elephant Stairs, while the donkey is depicted doing the same on the other side. In this manner the pictures do not explain who is winning the race, because the universe seems to have split into two alternate dimensions, but they do reveal an interesting aspect of the Elephant Stairs of which I was heretofore completely unaware: namely, that the underside of the stairs is dripping with acid slime.

My own dorm Michelson’s windows show the donkey and elephant standing on the grass under a huge “START” sign, waiting for the race to begin. I should warn you, however, that this is a fairly inventive interpretation of the paintings; at first glance it appears that the donkey and elephant are falling out of the sky and are about to land on a bed of huge green spikes.

Who will win the exciting window painting contest? The evil Smog Elephant and the Satan Donkey? The Alternate Universe Acid Foot Elephant and Donkey Duo? Or the About-To-Be-Impaled gang? Be sure to check back here in a few weeks! Because you don’t get the whole story unless you get the Bor story.

.: posted by Boris 11:48 PM

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Israel, Part 3: Yes, We're Actually In Israel Now

Shabbat was a great tour guide. Unlike some tour guides I’ve had in the past, he could tell when the popular mood was desirous of sleep, and didn’t talk at those times. In general, though, he spoke quite a bit; and though his imperfect English was punctuated fairly frequently with “um” and “ah” and — my favorite — “AEGHHHHHHHHHHHH”, he was generally pleasant to listen to and told us lots and lots of interesting things that I could probably fill up fifty pages with if I weren’t lazy and remembered what they were. I would say a good 64% of the stories he told us began with, “Two thousand years ago…” because apparently that’s when most of the interesting stuff in Israel happened. Shortly thereafter, the Hebrews got their asses kicked by the Romans and things weren’t so happy for the next couple millennia.

The tour bus was a mildly luxurious charter bus with overhead racks just narrow enough to stop my backpack from fitting. Also, because the side entrance to the bus was on the right side, the seats on the right side of the bus had significantly less leg room than their left side counterparts. Interestingly, I did not notice the difference until very near the end of trip, when Marina pointed it out to me. I’m guessing most people were stupid and unobservant like me; otherwise I expect there would have been nuclear warfare before every commute to determine who got to sit on the left because let me tell you, normal legs just didn’t fit in the right seats.

Our first stop was a scenic spot overlooking the old quarter of Jerusalem in the distance. Meeting us here was a group of three singing, drum-banging men dressed in what appeared to be togas who I thought were ruffian beggars that our tour guides would shoo away. Instead it turned out we hired them. Marvelous. One of the freaky toga singers was equipped with a microphone, so as to torture us better. The drums never stopped pounding their swaying, hypnotic rhythm; the miked singer never stopped screaming. Eventually the drummers coaxed a few mentally imbalanced people from our group into dancing in a circle to the joyful never-ending song. It was not a benign, mind-its-own-business kind of circle, though; this circle was evil, cancerous, forcibly sucking into itself innocent onlookers standing too close to the edge. You could see the horror on the victims’ faces when one of the way-too-friendly-looking toga men would grab their hands, beaming a smile of comradeship, mirth, and threat that if you didn’t join the circle, that smile would eat out your eyeballs.

Upon noting the development of the cancer circle, everybody quickly took three, four, or sometimes as many as fifty steps back, some disappearing from the trip forever.

At one point, the lead singer offered us a chance to sing. Nobody took up the offer, whether due to embarrassment or the hope that if no one accepted, we would sooner go home. Nobody, that is, except for Brad, an alcoholic smoker with bad knees and a terrible singing voice. Brad got drunk pretty much every night and allegedly passed out twice on a couch, pissing his pants both times. I personally cannot validate the rumor, but there it is. In any case, Brad sang a decent song, and then a not so decent one, which despite the drummers’ vainest efforts failed to follow anything akin to a beat. Eventually the lead singer politely but forcefully dispossessed Brad of the microphone and the hectic pounding/singing/screaming/evil dance circling continued.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, we took a break to hear a welcoming speech from Shabbat that probably involved something which happened two thousand years ago. Shabbat also presented us with challah, the traditional Jewish bread, and some traditional Jewish wine. I tore myself a hunk of bread but skipped on the wine; any Jewish person can tell you why. Challah is quite yummy, but the wine…how do I explain this?...fill a tub with grape juice, add forty cups of sugar, then a small packet of mayonnaise, and finally a dead hamster, then let it rot in the sun for a couple of days — that’s Jewish wine. Not enjoyable.

After the welcoming ceremony finally ended, we drove to our hotel and received room assignments. There were three people to a room; I was paired with some random kid from the other bus I had never seen before, and Brad. To be fair, at this time I did not yet know about Brad’s drinking problem or his inability to retain his consciousness or his urine, because of course none of these infamous escapades had happened yet, but I did know that he smoked, talked really loudly, and sang, without any shame or talent whatsoever, in front of over ninety perfect strangers; from these facts I gathered that Brad was probably not the type of guy who peacefully read books in the evening and went to bed at 10:30. My room assignment worried me, and I wondered if I was going to get any sleep on the trip.

Brad, like me, had a few friends on the trip, and fortunately some of his friends were male, meaning he could room with them. One such friend, Jordan, who was a decent-enough chap even though he wore big goofy sunglasses all the time, came up to Brad after we had gotten our room key and asked if either me or the other kid would be willing to trade rooms with him. As quickly as was possible without betraying my swelling desire to get away from Brad, I agreed. Jordan said his roomies were brothers who were “very cool guys.” They could have been a pot-smoking gay couple for all I cared; I figured the risk was worth it.

Luck was beside me, because my new roommates were awesome: Jeff, the bearded, law-school-bound opera/English major; and his brother Mike, who had a computer science job of some sort that he hated. I didn’t ever talk to Mike very much, but he was a big sports fan, and on our first evening together asked if I would mind if he watched some sports game at 3:00 AM. I said I didn’t mind at all, even though I minded a great deal, but it turned out he was joking. At least, I assume he was joking; possibly he turned the game on and I slept through it. Mike’s toiletries bag was designed, on the outside, to look just like a basketball.

Jeff and Mike were both quite intelligent. When we were all lying in bed on the first evening, they flipped the TV to an Israeli news program. As I slowly realized that Jeff had no intention of changing the channel, I began wondering why they would want to watch the news in a foreign language. “Oh, by the way,” Jeff suddenly said, perhaps noting the puzzled expression on my face, “we both speak fluent Hebrew.”

“Really?”

“No.”

After we received our room assignments, or possibly before, or maybe even during, heck if I remember, Quest and Foot each had a separate group meeting. We sat in a circle and played another icebreaker, although this one was much grander in scope than the LICE game and involved a ball of yarn. One person started out holding the ball of yarn and had to talk about himself, where he was from etc, and then conclude by expounding on his reasons for coming to Israel and what he hoped to get out of this trip. Naturally a lot of BS was involved here, because what 95% of the trip’s participants wanted was a free trip to Israel, but you couldn’t really say that. You had to say that you wanted to forge a deep connection to your spiritual Judaism and uncover your cultural heritage and walk on the sacred soil and breathe the hallowed air of your ancestors or whatever. Then, when the person finished talking, he had to pass or throw the ball of yarn to somebody else in the circle, but hold on to a few loops of string, so that after everybody had spoken, there was a big tangled interconnected mess of yarn in the middle of the room, and frankly I forget what the hell we did with it.

Chuck — a friendly guy with a penchant for smoking, tattoos, and body piercings — and Brad somehow managed to get thoroughly trashed before the meeting/yarn game, and consequently made loud, unhumorous comments throughout the entirety of the evening.

Israel, like all foreign countries except Canada, has much more to see and do than can be seen and done in ten days, but that didn’t stop us from trying. We went to sleep late, got up early, and a lot of times I felt like I wasn’t really seeing Israel at all, but rather fighting to survive from one bathroom break to the next. Although I assure you Israel is a perfectly civilized country with very decent plumbing, peeing in the woods was a necessity for me on at least one occasion I recall, and a common habit for others, some of them girls. Whenever we had the opportunity, those of us who didn’t much care for guzzling alcohol usually went to sleep as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

So when the phone rang at 11:30 the first night, Jeff, Mike and I were already lying in bed with the lights out. Please, I prayed, please don’t let it be for me. Please don’t tell me it’s my stupid da— “Boris, it’s for you,” Mike’s groggy voice groaned in the darkness. Fuck. With a sigh, I clambered out of bed and poked around the black room until I hit Mike’s hand and found the phone, which was situated such that when I held it the cord probably lay across Mike’s face. My dad wanted to know how things were going and all that other crap, which I told him in as brief a manner as possible without making any effort to conceal that (1) he had woken us up, (2) I was pissed, (3) and embarrassed.

The next day, Tuesday, we went in the morning to Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial. Some of you may know about The United States Holocaust Memorial in Washington, DC; Yad Vashem is, depending on who you ask, either basically the same thing, or completely different. After seeing Yad Vashem with my own eyes and giving the matter much thought, I decided that the two memorials are in fact quite different; the largest difference being, that unlike Yad Vashem, the United States Holocaust Memorial is a memorial I have never actually visited.

Our tour of the memorial was interesting and informative, highlighting an individualistic, personal side of the Holocaust that is often glossed over when people talk about the large, tragic numbers of victims. The guide spoke with a good accent and had a better command of the English language than some Americans I’ve met, for example Brad. In addition to going over the basic history of how the Holocaust progressed and how the minority of Nazis in Germany were able to brainwash the rest of the population into offering no resistance to their atrocious schemes, she told us many small-scale, personal stories that powerfully conveyed the sadness and the terror of the era.

The memorial consisted of several buildings, the coolest of which had a long, dark hallway with mirrors everywhere. Somehow, these mirrors were arranged around just six candles so that it looked like there were a million candles flickering all over the place. Recorded voices in several languages gravely read the names and ages of kids who had died.

Although photography was not permitted in many parts of the memorial, it wasn’t prohibited everywhere, a fact which Irene utilized to full advantage and took fifty billion pictures of me looking like an idiot eating a sandwich.

After the memorial we went on a day hike, taking the Spring path from Kennedy Memorial Park through Ein Hindak to the Sataf. At least, that’s what the itinerary says. From now on I won’t talk about each individual hike, partly to avoid needlessly straining my memory and partly because let’s face it, hikes are pretty boring to talk about. Basically, whenever we weren’t doing something touristy, we were hiking. One of the neat things about Israel is that it’s not all barren desert like I expected — there were rocky hikes, bushy hikes, watery hikes, hikes with caves, hikes with possibly poisonous berries that people ate anyway; there were a lot of hikes. We were Foot, after all. My favorite hikes were the ones where we got to explore caves. Cave crawling left some of the fondest impressions in probably everybody’s recollection of the trip, except for the losers. Crawling on my knees and sometimes even my stomach through cramped, dirty tunnels in the ground made me feel much cooler than I really am.

One of the most exciting such hikes was a forty minute trek through a water tunnel that was built (you guessed it) two thousand years ago. The water came up to my knees at times and the ceiling was so low that in some places even Irene had to duck. You can imagine, then, how sore Yana and I were by the time we got out. The tunnel was pitch black; I couldn’t see my proverbial hand in front of my proverbial face. Although there were a number of flashlights that were supposed to be dispersed throughout the group, somehow they all wound up in the very front and very back, whereas our clump was in the middle. We couldn’t catch up to the people in front of us because they got too far ahead, and we couldn’t slow down to wait for the people behind us because walking through complete darkness gave us the juicy illusion that we were hardcore.

I was at the back of our group, which was a nice place to be because if, for example, we encountered a sudden drop and the people at the people at the front of the group sprained their ankles on it, they were usually nice enough to pass a verbal warning back. Whenever Marina said, “I’m ducking,” I got ready to double over. Since everybody was blind, the best way to travel was to grab on to the straps of the backpack of the person in front of you. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t think to take hold of Yana’s backpack until we were already enshrouded in darkness; I couldn’t see where the straps were, and since straps are generally located at the base of the backpack, I didn’t particularly feel like groping around down there lest I accidentally grab Yana’s ass. As enjoyable as that would have been, we hadn’t yet been in Israel long and I thought it imprudent to create tension for the rest of the trip. So I had to maintain my hold on the middle portion of her backpack by means of a little plastic ring that gradually cut off all circulation to my right index and all subsequent fingers.

.: posted by Boris 9:11 AM

Wednesday, August 25, 2004

And I Thought Kerry Flip-Flopped...

Interesting factoid I picked up from history class today:

Most of you have probably heard, or will hear the distant ring of bells upon hearing, the following famous quote: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." I bet fewer of you know the author of that quote -- a Spanish philosopher named George Santayana -- and I bet fewer still of you are aware that the same philosopher was also responsible for this quote: "History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there." Sweet.

.: posted by Boris 8:36 PM

Wednesday, August 18, 2004

Freedom of Speech

[This Sunday I leave for college, which means today I probably would have been wise to start packing. Instead, I began the highly valuable and intellectually challenging task of organizing my word documents, putting them from one big folder into lots of little ones. I didn't come close to finishing, but I did discover an old, unposted blog entry which I had for some reason saved in the same folder as all my other documents instead of my separate Blog folder. Expecting a half-finished piece of garbage, I was much surprised when I read the entry and saw that it was pretty much finished. Why I never actually posted it, I have no clue -- maybe I meant to add more and never got around to it, or maybe I just simply forgot. In any case, here it is, very late, and better late than never.]

I’m sure that at one time or another you’ve all witnessed or been affected by what I like to call “the TV Effect.” It’s basically the phenomenon that if there’s a TV turned on, people nearby will watch it, even if it’s something unimaginably stupid and boring, like that one show where two families switch houses, redecorate them, and switch back. A recent example that comes to mind was when Michelle and I were over at Andy’s house to study for a genetics quiz. Basketball was on. I hate basketball. So does Andy. So does Michelle. Yet we were all watching it, to the point where it interfered with our studying:

ANDY: Hmm, I’m not really sure how to do #5.
BORIS: Well, to find the probability for three traits, don’t you just find the probability for each individual one and then multiply them together?
[here the TV Effect strikes a defenseless Boris]
ANDY: I’m not getting the answer in the back of the book.
MICHELLE: Neither am I.
ANDY: Boris, what’d you get?
BORIS: …
ANDY: Boris?
BORIS: [watching basketball]
ANDY: BORIS! Quit watching basketball!
BORIS: Oh! What? Uh…what problem are we on?

Another incidence of the TV Effect occurred yesterday, when my parents were watching the Academy Awards. I personally find the Oscar business mind-numbingly dull, but whenever I passed by the family room I would become frozen in my tracks, mesmerized by the latest interminable thank-you speech or the random series of movie clips. Actually, I probably would have ended up watching the whole thing except my parents have this ingratiatingly irritating habit of hitting the Mute button whenever the commercials come on. Somebody’s really gonna have to explain the logic of this habit to me. The whole point of watching TV is to not think, and preferably also to not move. Muting when the commercials start and un-muting when they end requires way too much thought and muscle movement; TV is supposed to be a time for your brain to take a break. And there’s a logical gap. If you mute the commercials to avoid watching them, YOU STILL HAVE TO WATCH THEM!! Otherwise, how will you know when the show is back on?? I have the same problem with those annoying people who switch channels during commercials: what possible gratification can you get by watching three minutes of another show, especially considering that throughout the entire duration of those three minutes you will be ill at ease and your brain will be anything but shut off, thinking constantly of the show on the other channel and hoping frantically that you’ll remember to switch back before the commercials end?

Anyway, the muting thing. I can’t take it. With my parents muting the commercials, there’s no way I could have sat through the four or however many hours of Academy Awards presentations. The silent ads would have been doubly irritating because in the case of the Oscars, akin to the Super Bowl, the commercials are by far the best part. Let’s be honest — does anybody REALLY care about most of the stuff that goes on at the Oscars? I especially hate the announcement of the winners. After presenting boatload upon boatload of stupid crap that has nothing to do with the Oscars, they FINALLY get to the Best Picture, and then what do they do? Announce the nominees and say the winner. Bam, five seconds, they’re done. People deserve to be shot for making anticlimactic endings like that. I mean, this is the part that everyone has been WAITING for. Couldn’t they do something special? Couldn’t the final award be punctuated by, oh, I don’t know, a live 1000-man orchestra performance of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture replete with cannon and machinegun fire? And then amidst the chaos everybody would leap to their feet, form a mob, heave the winners atop the arms of the crowd, and charge the stage, whereupon they’d drop the victorious crew near the mike with their clothes ripped and their glasses broken. Or something like that. Instead they take a cue from The Price is Right and show the winners clambering out of the crowded audience and making their way over to the stage, which is supposed to be dramatic but in fact gets old really quick. Another thing that gets old really quick is how none of the winners have prepared thank-you speeches. If you’re nominated for an Oscar, WHY wouldn’t you take five seconds of your time beforehand to prepare a nice, short speech?! Sure, the chances of you actually winning are small, but do you really want to have the memory of the crowning achievement of your life followed immediately thereafter by the memory of you making a fool of yourself in front of millions of people with a dry, overly long speech in which every third letter is punctuated by UH or UM or WOW I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS?

So getting back to the story — I didn’t watch all of the Academy Awards, despite the overpowering TV Effect. But I did hear most of them, because when the TV is on in our house, you hear it EVERYWHERE. I didn’t catch any of the commercials, because my parents muted those, but I did pick up a good number of speeches and winners from the comfort of the computer room, where the computer was blasting the living tar out of me in Hearts. One of the speeches stands out in my mind, and if you watched the Awards, you can probably guess which one it was — the thank-you speech Michael Moore gave upon his receipt of the Best Documentary Oscar for his film “Bowling for Columbine.” Though you probably shouldn’t call it a thank-you speech. Sitting far away from the TV and not paying complete attention (Hearts requires a lot of concentration, you know), I wasn’t alerted to the fact that something weird was going on until I heard loud boos emanating from the TV. What could possibly make an Oscar audience boo?, I thought. If those idiots will applaud for gaudily overdressed actresses wearing sixteen metric tons of mascara who get up there and gasp like beached carp and then personally thank, by name, the entire populace of Liechtenstein, then they’ll applaud for anybody, right?

Nope. Though supposedly some people stood up and applauded (according to a now-gone Yahoo news story), many of the audience members became pissed fast when Mr. Moore decided to use his thank-you speech as an opportunity to denounce Bush and the war in Iraq. The loud booing continued all the way through Moore’s mercifully short speech, and then the fruity Academy Awards trumpet music came on to signify the commercial break as though nothing had happened. My parents dutifully hit the mute button and I thought, “Ha ha! I bet he’s never gonna get an Oscar again!”

A short while later, when I had taken enough punishment from the computer at that incredibly stupid but unbelievably addicting little card game, I decided to go to bed. My parents, who have a TV in their bedroom and could easily have finished watching the Oscars there, were nice enough to instead stay in the family room, which is separated from my bedroom by a thin wall that is about as soundproof as bubble paper is bulletproof. Just because their only son was going to bed didn’t mean that he wanted to do something as silly as sleep. Surely what he really wanted was to have the rest of the Academy Awards thunder in his ears for half the night! Their obsessive commercial muting was a nice added touch: during each silence I would think that it was all finally over, but then…BAM!! LOUD FRUITY TRUMPET MUSIC!! WAKEY WAKEY! Here come more speeches! Yeah, that was quite a fun night.

But here I go again, wandering down bitter side paths and straying from my story (you do know that there's a story in here, right?). While listening to the rest of the murderously boring speeches that would have been blissfully soporific if only they weren’t so goddam loud, I heard another one that I found really interesting. It was given by some old-sounding lady who was presenting the Oscar for Best Song. It was all mushy and patriotic and stuff, splattered throughout with heart-wrenching sentiments that made the audience applaud. She concluded by saying that she was “proud” and “honored” to live in a country where “everybody has the right to say what they think.” Whether or not any of her sputtering jabber had anything at all to do with the Best Song was a dubious matter, but the audience applauded nonetheless, and to me, the applause was very hypocritical. The right of free speech — these people applauded the sappy, senile woman who praised it, but earlier had booed off the stage the man who had actually exercised it. What gives?

Exhausted after making an observation that used up my entire month’s supply of Insightful Thoughts rations, I grudgingly listened to the rest of the stupid awards ceremony in a half-comatose state and then at last lapsed into sleep.

.: posted by Boris 7:40 PM

Sunday, July 25, 2004

Israel, Part Two: If You Haven't Already Done So, You May Want To Read Part One. Or You May Not, Because It's Really Boring

With ten seats per row in the middle and eight seats per row in the back, plus a special second floor for first class, the El Al plane was the biggest I have ever been on. I got an aisle seat in the right section around row 50, a rather nice seat, but the guy who had the window seat in that section immediately asked me if I wanted to switch and I agreed because I’m a spineless idiot. So I ended up sitting next to a window, trapped, unable visit my friends, pee, or do anything else.

The one thing I could theoretically do was write, but to write I needed a journal, and to get a journal I needed Marina, and to get Marina I needed an aisle seat, which I foolishly lost. Marina was near row 15, and when the seat belt sign went off and I saw that my two seatmates had no intention of getting up, I despaired of ever obtaining the precious journal — with the aisles likely to be crowded by listless passengers and drink-serving stewardesses, and with 35 rows between my seat and hers, getting Marina was impossible. That I’d have to pester the two strangers in my section to get up so that I could get out, and then again later so that I could get back in, only made me want to try even less. But those who know me will tell you that I am not a man who just gives up and quits in the face of adversity and danger. I give up in the face of unpleasantness and mild discomfort, too.

So I gave up, rationalizing my cowardice and laziness with the thought that Marina probably wanted the journal for herself anyway. When the plane reached cruising altitude and the diseased shitpot called New York was safely behind me, I began to write on some pages torn out of one of those free airline magazines. Luckily, the magazine had a few alcohol ads with nice, large, blank backgrounds, which were okay enough to write on, although I still had to maneuver around the bottles. Better than nothing, I supposed, but still fairly depressing, especially when I could have had a journal. If only I hadn’t given up the aisle seat…

Suddenly, to my elated astonishment, I saw Marina fighting her way down the aisle. It was the wrong aisle, of course, and from way the heck over on the wrong side of the plane, I looked longingly at Marina. Finally she saw where I was sitting and we made eye contact; although I, being a guy, can never fully master the female art of communicating via eye contact, I’ve known Marina for a long time and I can figure her eyes out a little sometimes and I believe at that moment her eyes said, “Fuck.” Then she began elbowing her way back up the aisle, and soon disappeared up ahead. A while later she returned down the aisle, the correct aisle this time, and slowly made her way over to my seat.

Marina would later remark, frequently, upon the insufferable ordeals she courageously faced whilst traversing those thirty-five rows. Squeezing past fat stomachs, jumping over drink carts, ducking between legs (at 5’1”, Marina is really short, and short people are good at such things), kicking aside obnoxious bathroom-goers — these are, I imagine, the trials Marina braved so as to render the journal to my grateful arms. Giving up her journal gave me the ability to write and kill a lot of time, and prevented her from doing the same; furthermore, performing this selfless act of kindness cost Marina a great deal of effort and frustration.

I was grateful beyond words. Marina’s noble sacrifice showed me that even though she is incredibly mean, and vicious, and calls me “worthless” and insults me on a quarter-hourly basis, and seemed cheerfully near, on the plane to New York, to vomiting all over the entire expanse of my lap, and told Natalie Lesser, in sixth grade, in horrifying violation of many earnest assurances that she would tell nobody, that I had a crush on said Natalie, in my presence no less — in spite of all these things, I saw then that Marina did in fact possess love and warmth — albeit perhaps in a microscopic quantity buried hidden and rotting in a dank and moldy corner somewhere deep within the scabrous, ashen passages of her charcoal heart — but love and warmth nonetheless.

Yes, I was grateful beyond words, which is why I probably should have taken the journal and kept my mouth shut. Instead I spoke, and with eloquence and brevity tried to express to Marina my undying gratitude for her magnificent deed. This expression of thanks would have been quite magnificent itself, were it not for my sore lacking in both eloquence and brevity, resulting in an incoherent babble that fell deaf to Marina’s annoyed ears because she was at that moment being stampeded by a torrent of mobile irate passengers, about as welcome in the aisle as a ten-pound kidney stone in the urinary tract. Finally I stopped speaking, or maybe Marina just told me to shut up, and then she left, disappearing forever into the sweaty mists of the forward seating section.

Procrastination is one of the most potent forces in the universe, right up there with hydrogen bombs and quasars. I have always been a huge procrastinator when it comes to writing, but I thought that since I was chained up in a window seat for ten hours with nothing to do except write, I would write, especially since I don’t really know what a “quasar” is. Yeah. Amazing, really, how many things, other than writing of course, I found instead to occupy my time: eating, reading, sleeping, trying to sleep, pretending to sleep, pretending to try to sleep, just plain sitting, pretending to just plain sit but actually trying to sleep, and on and on, all the while Marina’s battle-scarred journal sat idle in my seatback pocket smushed next to the headphones and the magazine with the torn-out alcohol ads.

Speaking of eating, I have to say that the El Al dinner was marvelous. A few hours into the flight I developed a frightening hunger and, along with it, the gnawing fear that I would have to consume my entire supply of Nutri-Grain bars. But the dinner was so delicious and so filling that I couldn’t even finish the breakfast the stewardess served several hours later, let alone the Nutri-Grain bars (which by then were no longer bar-like in their composition, due to the forcible compaction process that had long ago turned them into raspberry-scented granola paste inside my backpack). Quite a feat given that airline food is generally about as appetizing as sawdust. For breakfast we had a choice between an omelet and some other thing. Airline omelet sounded like a bad move so I chose the other thing, which I don’t remember what it was except that it was gross and I didn’t eat it.

I was the only person, as far as I later gathered, who thought the flight was too short. When the plane began its descent into Israel, other people sighed with exaltation at the visible end of the miserable, cramped, ten-hour journey, and the visible beginning of an exciting, wonderful, life-changing experience. But not me. I was still scribbling furiously about Irene’s bad experience with the security interview. Not even at the icebreaker yet! I fumed. I might have finished chronicling the events of the day had I not been such a procrastinating lazy bastard, and had I not wasted so much time writing an introductory treatise on automatic bathrooms, which segued nicely into the actual story but was otherwise long and entirely irrelevant and un-noteworthy save for my successful usage of the phrase “handjob soap machine” in a valid sentence.

On Saturday, May 16, I woke up in my bed at home for the last time. Twenty-one hours and a little over eight pages later, I finally took my first step on Israeli soil in the Jerusalem airport. It was beautiful. It was stupendous. It was stupid and boring just like every other airport. The ATM didn’t like my card and wouldn’t give me any money, even though I really wanted money. My bank account seriously had money in it, too — the blasted ATM must have been in cahoots with the evil interrogator lady who didn’t like me. “He’s a bad Jew — let him STARVE!!” I bet that’s the message the interrogator lady sent to the ATM. Luckily I had brought spare cash with me, sixty dollars of which I traded in for a little over two-hundred fifty of the Israeli Shekels. So take THAT, bitch.

The gals and I decided — which is to say, the gals decided — that we should get money first and luggage later. By the time we got the money issue settled, everybody else had already taken their luggage off the conveyor, so there weren’t many suitcases left on the merry-go-round and ours were easy to find. Except for Irene’s. Her suitcase wasn’t there. Perhaps — a chill ran down my spine at the thought — Irene (or should I say “Irene”) was actually indeed a terrorist, and security discovered, in her suitcase, among other things, a nuclear warhead. Then they confiscated the luggage and were about to go arrest Irene, but the warhead blew up and everybody died, along with Irene’s underwear. Upon not seeing her luggage, Irene began to panic, ostensibly because her luggage was gone, but truthfully because her jig was up.

It turned out that Irene was blinder than a blind bat and didn’t realize that the conveyor had stopped moving and that her suitcase was sitting very peacefully by its lonesome self on the other side of the baggage claim.

Suitcases in hand and Shekels in wallet, everybody assembled for some introductory words of welcome and preliminary announcements, which must not have been very important because I don’t remember any of them. The junior coordinators performed a random passport check, the point of which I’m not entirely clear on except that Irene wasn’t chosen for it, a major stroke of luck that ensured her true, thieving terrorist identity would remain unknown. At this time we also met our tour guide, a handsome man in his early fifties named Shabbat. “Shabbat” is also the word for Saturday, the Jewish day of rest, except with the other syllable stressed — so, the guide’s name was SHA-butt whereas the weekly holiday is pronounced sha-ASS, er, excuse me, sha-BUTT. Syllable vagaries aside, Shabbat’s name was very fitting and Jewish, as was the name of the Quest bus’s tour guide: “Israeli.” Surely the Jewishness of our tour guides’ names was a good omen.

.: posted by Boris 5:36 PM

Thursday, July 01, 2004

Israel, Part One: Getting On the Plane

Several months ago, two of my friends, Marina and Irene — well, mostly it was just Marina — convinced me — well, threatened serious bodily injury if I declined — to go to Israel. There’s an organization called Birthright Israel which sponsors free (FREE!) tours of Israel for Jews aged 18-26 who have never been on a similar tour before. These trips are a great opportunity for young Jewish people to see their homeland, learn about their cultural roots, and hook up with each other, which is awesome, but Marina’s keen dog nose whiffed rumors that funds for the Birthright trips were drying up, so the three of us decided to go while the opportunity still existed.

Since this is a public blog, I realize it would be out of line for me to try to push my personal religious beliefs here. However, if you are not Jewish, I have a question for you: does YOUR religion get you a FREE TRIP to the homeland of your people?? Does it?? Think about THAT next time you go to church, or to Buddha, or to the human virgin sacrificial altar, or to wherever it is that you practice your religion.

The only catch to this ABSOLUTELY FREE TOUR OF ISRAEL was that the plane to Israel left from New York, which is far away from Columbus, at least on a sub-cosmic level, so Marina, Irene and I had to catch a plane to New York first. After many tearful goodbyes at the Columbus International Airport, which is not international, the three of us finally managed to tear loose from our parents’ worried death-grips and went to our gate to wait for the plane.

Was I afraid to go to Israel? Thanks to our beloved news media, many Americans think of Israel as a dangerous place where you can’t take three steps without having a bomb blow up in your face. But in fact, the odds of being killed in a terrorist attack in Israel are no greater than the odds of being killed in a fatal car accident here in America. I used to be afraid of driving, but now I’m not, so I figured going to Israel would be okay, although my mom did not share my lighthearted attitude and my grandma, I feel, came very close to playing the Guilt card she used on me in seventh grade when I said I wanted gerbils. “Either me, or the rat,” was her ultimatum. I ended up getting a cat.

We were excited about going to Israel and chatted gaily. Marina and I hadn’t seen Irene in a long time — she lives in Cincinnati — so we mostly talked about her. Her high school graduation was the day after we came home from Israel, and next fall she is going to MIT, which means if any of you want to see her you might want to get down to Cincinnati right quick because by October she might not be alive anymore. Having finished our first year of college, Marina and I fancied ourselves great experts on the meaning of life, and we offered Irene a lot of advice that she probably discarded as trash and forgot immediately.

At some point during our conversation, the plane — the one that was supposed to take us to New York — left.

The airport lady seemed cross and insisted that she had announced a final boarding call three times and even paged our names. I figured we must have collectively tuned out the last half hour’s worth of PA announcements, but Marina and Irene thought the lady was a vicious liar plotting a conspiracy of some sort or other against us. Whatever the case, a nice man was there and he gave us tickets for a flight leaving a measly two hours later. Initially we had bought extremely early tickets on purpose just in case if something bad happened. “Something bad” was not supposed to include “the three of us have the cumulative intelligence of a clogged gutter,” but nonetheless we still had plenty of time — the new flight was scheduled to arrive in New York around 1:30, and the plane to Israel did not leave for another six hours after that — so I was not very worried about our little booboo. The way I saw the situation, the worst thing that could happen was we’d miss the Israel trip. On the one hand, I’d miss out on visiting a beautiful country and discovering the history of my people. But on the other hand, I’d get to play a lot more computer games. Everything balanced out.

My female pals, however, were not so relaxed. I could hardly finish one sentence of my book (awesome book, by the way — Fahrenheit 451) before either Marina or Irene, or both, would start spazzing: “Could we REALLY have missed our NAMES being paged over the LOUDSPEAKER? That lady HAD to have been lying. I mean, could we REALLY…” The monstrous tragedy was relived every five seconds. For two hours I sat and alternated between 1) trying to get my hormonally imbalanced companions to relax, 2) trying to get them to shut up, and 3) trying to resist going to the bathroom and drowning myself in a toilet bowl.

I was failing pretty badly at all three, but luckily the plane arrived just as I was about to go kill myself, and this time we didn’t miss it. Arriving in New York’s La Guardia Airport with many hours to spare, we nabbed a taxi to JFK Airport, because the plane to Israel departed there. An irritation, yes, that we landed in the wrong airport (cheaper tickets), but a filthy, disgusting, smelly, ugly, hideous, worthless, dangerous, traffic-congested city like New York needs to have multiple airports so that people can get the hell away from there as quickly as possible.

At the El Al terminal — El Al is the Israeli airline company — we paid the taxi driver and took our stuff and were about to leave when suddenly the driver asked us for a yellow slip. “What yellow slip?” Marina asked him. “You were supposed to take a yellow slip when you got the taxi,” he replied. “I need it now so that I can get back into the airport.” Our faces went white. Ohhh shit. Nobody had taken the yellow slip. We were alone in a strange, scary city talking to a big black man who wanted a yellow slip from us which we did not possess. How important was this slip to him? Might it mean his career? His life? Maybe he thought we were hiding the yellow slip. The guy was easily big enough to bludgeon us all to death with his fists and search our lifeless bodies to make sure we weren’t. He could grab out stuff, throw it in the taxi, and force us to ride back to La Guardia with him to get the yellow slip. Heck, at that moment, as far as I was concerned, it was not far outside the realm of possibility for the taxi driver to get VERY VERY ANGRY and turn into a giant green Hulk (atrocious movie, by the way) and squish us all with his big toe, and then examine the resulting paste for yellow slip remains.

The cabbie smiled. He said that while a yellow slip would be nice, he could survive without one, and drove away. Marina, Irene, and I let out one big breath, cursed ourselves once again for our stupidity, and proceeded into the airport.

Apparently, baggage flies on the same plane that the people do. I learned this fact during the journey to New York; previously I had thought that there was a separate baggage plane. Is that not a natural thing to think? Marina and Irene didn’t seem to think so, and now whenever they want to make fun of me for being stupid, they whisper “baggage plane” and whip themselves up into a laughing frenzy.

The Birthright group was not particularly difficult to spot, as it was the only small mass of Jewish-looking teenagers gathered amidst a blob of luggage and backpacks. Marina, Irene and I approached the gathering and made our own little clump of baggage that was very close to, but not a part of, the main group. As you can see, we are not very social. We stood there awkwardly until somebody asked us if we were on Birthright, at which point we went towards the edge of the blob, as far away from the other people as possible, and sat, also awkwardly.

As more people arrived, we were forced to make painful small talk with the ones that decided to sit down at our edge. One guy we met, Jeff, had just finished his Bachelor’s degree in English and opera performance, and was now about to go to law school. Jeff and his brother Mike ended up being my roommates for the trip. A girl with really big boobs also sat down near us. Even as I was thinking about how big her boobs were, she was telling one of her friends about a wedding she went to where some important father, maybe it was the bride’s father, I don’t remember, would not stop blatantly staring at her boobs. Maybe it was all the people’s fathers. However many old men stared at her boobs, though, I completely sympathized with them all.

At this time we also met Sarah, one of the junior coordinators on the Quest bus. The 84 people going on the trip were divided into two groups, Quest and Foot, and it turned out that the itineraries for the two groups were about 80% identical, with Foot doing more hiking and one ridiculously difficult biking trip (originally there was a third group, Bike, that didn’t generate enough interest and therefore got merged with Foot). We chose — okay, Marina chose — to sign up for Foot, lest Quest turn out to be too touristy, so Sarah was not on our bus.

However, talking to Sarah was nonetheless very beneficial, because we learned a great deal about the responsibilities of a junior coordinator, which were: nothing. Sarah didn’t know what we were doing, or when we were doing it, or where we were staying. In fact, she did not seem to know anything at all. When I asked Sarah, in slightly more diplomatic terms, what the crap the point of a junior coordinator was if they didn’t know diddly squat, she told me that her job was to “make sure everybody has a good time.” Which sounded pretty ridiculous to me, because if someone’s having a bad time, what are you going to do? Yank them aside and perform juggling tricks with colored balls? Sneak up behind them and inject heroin into their bloodstream?

The last person of note who we met at this point was a girl named Yana. Yana just finished her freshman year at Johns Hopkins. She is a very smart chemical engineering major who hopes to go to law school some day and become a patent lawyer, but more to the point, she knows a guy at Hopkins named Ron who went to high school with me and Marina. Sly matchmaker that he is, Ron preemptively told Yana about Marina and Marina about Yana, so the two girls immediately formed a bond when they met. Consequently Yana roomed with Marina and Irene and spent a great deal of time with our antisocial cluster throughout the trip.

Checking luggage and obtaining a ticket required passage through the most grueling airport security interrogation of my life. Standing in line, I saw a row of about ten young, handsome El Al personnel each engaged in friendly (or so it appeared) conversation with a would-be passenger. Normally I don’t get asked many questions in the airport; just the usual stupid ones along the lines of, “Is there film in your luggage? How about a rocket launcher? Are you sure nobody snuck one of those in there while you weren’t looking?” I suppose I should have considered more deeply what all the intense conversation was about, instead of assuming that the El Al questioners were pleasantly chatting with the Birthright kids about the weather. I would have loved to talk about the weather. In Cleveland, where I go to college, the weather is heinously bad, so it comprises about 97% of all conversation that takes place on campus, and I have become a highly practiced conversationist on that subject, even though generally I have the social skills of a discolored Christmas tree ornament.

As my time in line drew to a close and I approached my interrogator, I quickly saw that the young face which had seemed friendly from a distance was actually cold and impassive, the eyes flat. Immediately the girl began blasting me with questions about my Judaism. Did I know any Hebrew? Did my parents? Did my grandparents? Did my cat? No?? Why not?? One after another her questions pelted my ears. All I could say was “No…no…uh, no…” and with each No, I saw the girl becoming more and more convinced that I was a bad Jew and, consequently, a bad person. As the interview wore on, the girl seemed so menacing, so angry at my apparent disregard for the Jewish faith, that I grew increasingly worried she would slap me across both cheeks and physically throw me, by the neck, out of a window.

Her: “How did your family celebrate Hanukah?”
Me: “Well, we don’t really…I mean, we lit the, uh—“
Her: [interrupting] “What is the story behind Hanukah?”
Me: “Um…something to do with candles…?”
Her: [almost spitting with anger] “Everybody knows that!”

Things were going poorly. I knew I had scored a few points — my grandparents spoke Yiddish, I had family in Israel, up through third grade I went to a private Hebrew school — but I needed a kicker, a grand slam to convince the evil little interrogator that I was in fact Jewish. Luckily for me, towards the end of the interview she asked: “What is the story behind Pesach?” And I was home free. In English Pesach is called “Passover,” which is part of the story of how the Jews finally escaped from several centuries of slavery at the hands of the Egyptians. Frankly I don’t know why God waited four hundred years to do this, but eventually he came around and smote the Egyptians with ten great plagues: Water Turning to Blood, Boils, Plague of Locusts, A Shitload of Frogs, Menstrual Cycle Alignment, Reality TV, and some others that I can’t remember. The most important plague was the tenth one, where God stopped screwing around with fancy stuff like the frogs and blood-water and just went and killed all of the Egyptians’ first-borns. Beforehand, though, the Jews, in order that their families be spared, marked their doorposts with lamb blood. Or maybe it was goat blood. Or sheep blood. Anyway, some kind of blood, and then, when God went on his killing spree, he saw the blood and knew which houses to “pass over” and not kill the first-born inside. Thus the name of the holiday, “Passover.” We Jews are a witty bunch.

Having spent the past five minutes cowering meekly under the rage of the wrathful questioner, I was excited beyond all belief to finally get a question which I could answer. You can imagine the long, passionate rant I began to unfurl upon the gears of the interrogator’s angry little mind, but about three sentences into it she cut me off. I was pissed, even though the cut-off meant that she was done with me and I could continue onwards to drop off my luggage and get my ticket.

I was not the only one who had a difficult time with the El Al security questions. People swapped horror stories from the experience right up until the plane ride home. Nor did I have the most horrifying story — Irene, who knows even less about Judaism than I do, and who had a really mean interrogator, actually “failed” the interview. She is a small, skinny girl, four foot eleven. Clearly, a terrorist. After the initial grilling, she was pulled aside for extra questioning by an angry, frothing woman who moved her head closer to Irene’s after every question, so that eventually the two were practically making out. Finally the mean lady quit molesting Irene and let her check her luggage, but there was a catch. Instead of the yellow stickers that my and everybody else’s luggage got, Irene’s luggage got white stickers. The security people tried to do it all cool and sneaky like, not telling anybody about the color difference, thinking they could get away with the ploy without anybody noticing, but we noticed their little games all right. Unfortunately, since asking “Hey, why the fuck did Irene get white stickers?” would probably not have been a prudent move, we really had no way of finding out what the white meant. For all we knew, maybe the white stickers were a signal to enter all of Irene’s personal information into a suspected criminal database, so that even as we speak she is being surveyed by top-notch spies from all over the globe, and if she ever goes into a dark alley and purchases a plasma gun from a shady weapons dealer, all of the world’s governments will know about it and react accordingly with tanks and nuclear missiles. Sorry, Irene: no plasma guns for you!

Irene’s backpack was searched and confiscated. Nothing bad was found inside, but the plane did not leave for another couple of hours, and of course it would have been MADNESS to allow a maniac criminal psychopathic killer like Irene to have an unsupervised backpack for two hours and then bring it on a plane. Who knows what kind of vile things she could put in there during that time? Guns, grenades, vials of anthrax, all of which I’m sure could be found in the airport, since we were, after all, in New York. When the plane boarding began, Irene and two other suspected homicidal bad-Jews were escorted directly to the gate, thus making ABSOLUTELY DARN SURE that Irene would not be able to stuff her backpack with explosives in the fifteen or so minutes before the plane left. (Never mind that for the past two hours she had been absolutely free to purchase explosives and fill her pockets, her shoes, and any of my, Marina’s, or Yana’s backpacks with them.)

While we were waiting at the gate, a little Jewish boy came up and started peppering me with questions. I guess I was friendly-looking and his parents never taught him not to talk to strangers. “Are you Jewish?” he asked me. I told him I was. “Are you good to other Jewish people?” he asked. “Yes, I hope so,” I told him. Next question: “Why aren’t you wearing a yarmulke?” Shit. This kid was worse than the interrogator girl. Jewish men are supposed to always keep their heads covered, and a yarmulke — also called a kippa — is a thin flat thing that one dons for this purpose when not already wearing a hat. I and most Jews you’re likely to find are not very religious, however, so we don’t wear kippas, but at that particular moment I did not really feel like trying to explain what it meant to be Jewish and yet not religious. I have a hard enough time explaining that concept to people my own age. You will not believe how many times I’ve had the following conversation:

Me: “I don’t believe in God.”
Person: [confused] “Waaaaaait…I thought you were Jewish?”
Me: “That is correct.”
Person: [really confused] “But…you just said…you don’t believe in God…?”
Me: “Okay?”
Person: [explodes]

I did not want to corrupt this boy, who was obviously being raised in a very Jewish family, with such talk, so instead I casually replied, “I guess I’m a bad Jew.” To which he pointedly queried, “Well then how can you be good to other Jewish people if you’re a bad Jew yourself?” The kid was good. However, I wasn’t quite yet willing to give up the fight, so I calmly replied, “Ummmmm…” and then luckily his mom dragged him away a few moments later.

Shortly before boarding began, the Quest and Foot people split up into their respective groups. I don’t know what the Quest people did, but we Footers got into a circle — it was the first of many circles on the trip — and played a game of LICE, which stands for “Lamest Icebreaker Created Ever.” LICE is a go-around-the-circle kind of game. Each person has to give three facts about themselves, one of which is false. Then everybody else guesses which fact is the lie. Of course everybody tries to be really clever, thinking up something outrageous as one of their true facts and making the false fact sound nondescript, i.e., “I have two brothers,” when really the person only has one. The idea is to find out some random, way too personal fact about everybody in the circle. However, if you’re gonna try to break the ice that way, I say just make everybody get naked and play Twister.

After the game of LICE — which was really annoying because half of the people didn’t talk loudly enough to be heard over the ambient noise in the airport and the other half screwed up the rules somehow (Maya, for instance, a junior coordinator, gave four facts instead of three, and they were all true) — we sat around for a little while longer and finally started to board the plane. Right as we were about to get on, I suddenly remembered that I wanted to borrow Marina’s journal. A lot of stuff had happened already and I wanted to write about it so that I wouldn’t forget, and so that I’d have something to do during the ten hour flight after I got sick of reading and trying to sleep. Sadly, I didn’t think to pack anything to write on, which is why Marina had graciously offered me her journal earlier, and which for some reason I did not take right away. Now it was too late, since the crowd was pushing us onward and Marina would have generated a great deal of anger if she stopped to root through her backpack. Thus, I told her I’d find her once we were in the air.

As we were waiting in line to board the plane, I saw an old lady being pushed by in a wheelchair. She held a long and skinny box that, judging from the picture on it, contained a pogo stick. I’m sure there was a perfectly logical explanation for a crippled woman to possess a pogo stick, but the only images going through my head at the moment were of this decrepit woman hopping out of the wheelchair onto her pogo stick and bouncing around like a kangaroo. I started chuckling uncontrollably once I felt she was out of earshot. I am a cruel, mean person.

.: posted by Boris 4:11 PM

Monday, May 10, 2004

We Lose

Which is the better gender: male, female, or dinosaur? At first you might think, “Duh, dinosaur. They’re big and powerful and they crush stuff.” But you are wrong. Anyone who thinks the word “duh” before making a thought is stupid. Also, the dinosaurs died when a big meteor hit the Earth and sent up a dust cloud that blocked the sun — so the entire dinosaur species was killed by a DUST CLOUD. Weak!!

Thus we are left with males and females. Males have a lot of things going for them. They’re physically stronger. They also run the world, mostly. Females think they control us and are better than us, but WE are the ones who own the nukes. We control the corporations, the world economy, the jobs, the fate of billions of people. Women control: sex. And, from the way things are looking as far as the world population goes, women aren’t controlling it very well. So it looks like we menfolk have the upper hand. But! In the end, women win, because they have something that men don’t. They have something so incredibly cool that men can’t hope to compete. They have IFH: intelligent flying hormones.

What is IFH? It’s a long story, most of which is probably horribly false. You will listen to it anyway. And, if you’re a girl, you may lose all respect for me.

Roughly every month, women get this thing called a “period.” A period is basically where the woman loses some blood and her hormones temporarily go out of whack like the instruments on an airplane after an electromagnetic surge. This can be bad. But since the complete menstrual cycle is about the same length for every woman, and since the point at which the cycle first appears is random, you would expect that, given a concentrated population of women, the odds that all of their hormones will go out of whack at the same time are, mercifully, very small.

Wrong! Apparently — as I learned from sources who I trust are reliable, because they are girls — when many women are around each other, all of their cycles shift into alignment. Kind of like the alignment of the planets, only not nearly as cool. And not as gradual, either — you would expect this cycle-shifting to be a gradual process, requiring maybe a year to complete, or at least the length of one cycle — but once again: wrong! Put a bunch of girls together, and BAM, within as quickly as one week, all of their cycles might be in alignment. All of those hormones spinning crazily out of control all at once. Scary!

But also pretty nifty. Because you have to wonder: HOW do these cycles know to shift? How do one female’s hormones know that there are other females about? One possible answer is magic fairies that go around making cakes with yummy frosting and poisoned mushrooms. You eat the cake and it makes you puke, and then the magic fairies laugh. I saw this one episode of 20/20 many years ago where some dude found tasty-looking mushrooms in the forest and fed them to his whole family, and then they all woke up in the middle of the night puking and pooping uncontrollably and had to go to the hospital. The mushrooms were actually poisonous! A very sad episode, I must say. The moral of this paragraph is: don’t trust mushrooms, even if they look tasty and came from fairies.

You may like the fairy theory, even though it has nothing whatsoever to do with menstrual cycles, but I myself prefer the IFH (Intelligent Flying Hormones, if you will recall) theory. Basically, I believe that women continuously give off these IFH, which then intelligently fly around everywhere. After much flying, the IFH return to the woman and decide what to do. Most of the time, they do nothing. But if there is another woman living nearby — or, better yet, many other women — then the IFH from each woman eventually bump into each other and start chatting. A possible conversation could go as follows:

IFH #1: Hey! I haven’t seen you before! How’s it going?
IFH #2: Not bad, not bad.
IFH #1: So when’s your girl due for a period?
IFH #2: Eh…I’m thinking a week, maybe a week and a couple of days. You?
IFH #1: Coming up soon! Three days.
IFH #2: Ah, bummer! You’ll be done right when I have to start working.
IFH #1: No kiddin’. Say, do you wanna coordinate?
IFH #2: Yeah! I’ll see about maybe starting early.
IFH #1: And I can ask my people if we can push things back a day or two.
IFH #2: Yeah, yeah! And then we’ll end at the same time; maybe grab a beer afterwards?
IFH #1. Awesome.

If there are a lot of women around, and therefore many different IFH bandying about, then they all arrange a meeting time and decide how best to shift cycles to accommodate the entire group. That way, they can ALL get beer together. Crazy, you might think. But cycle alignment happens, and there’s gotta be a reason. I think the reason is that women possess smart hormones that fly around and talk to other smart flying hormones. I also think that women can talk to each other telepathically. Sometimes a bunch of people will be sitting around, it’s a nice day outside, nothing’s happening, when all of a sudden: two girls turn and intensely look each other in the eye for a few seconds. Then they giggle maniacally. Nobody can figure out what is so funny, especially the guys in the group, and the girls claim that they can communicate via eye contact and that guys are too stupid to figure it out.

Eye contact, my foot! Girls pass messages to their IFH and thereby basically communicate via telepathy. Look:

Girl #1: Paging IFH…boys are dumb.
IFH of Girl #1: [leaves the body] Why hello! I believe we’ve met. How’s life?
IFH of Girl #2: Decent. Just got off a period two days ago. You?
IFH of Girl #1: Ah, mine’s coming up in two weeks. We should coordinate next time!
IFH of Girl #2: Indeed! For now, though, wanna grab a beer sometime tonight?
IFH of Girl #1: Sure; will you be around?
IFH of Girl #2: I think so. Hopefully I’ll catch you later.
IFH of Girl #1: Okay, cool. Oh, hey — tell your girl that “boys are dumb.”
IFH of Girl #2: All righty. See ya.
IFH of Girl #1: Later.
IFH of Girl #2: [returns] Paging host…boys are dumb.
Girls #1 and #2: [looking at each other and sharing a knowing smile] Giggle.

And that is why, my male friends, we lose.

.: posted by Boris 11:05 PM

Sunday, May 02, 2004

20 Questions AI

A kid in my English class just posted the coolest link on our discussion board. Click here to see what I'm talking about. Have you ever played the game 20 Questions? If you haven't, then you're dumb. Basically, the website is like 20 Questions -- only you come up with whatever you want, and the AI will figure it out! I was utterly blown away. First the program guessed "computer," then "monkey," then "poop." The AI figured out "poop"!!! Unbelievable. I urge you to take a look -- you won't be disappointed.

Unless you're not a loser and you have a life. Then you might be disappointed.

The game's victory message:

You were thinking of a poop.
Is it multicolored? You said No, I say Yes.

Is poop really multicolored? If my poop was multicolored, I think I'd be more than a little worried.

.: posted by Boris 10:46 PM

Friday, April 23, 2004

Laziness

While brushing my teeth this evening, I overheard two guys talking in the shower about the chem test today. One of them said something that offers a great deal of insight into what kind of a school Case is:

“Yeah, I definitely got lazy for this test. I mean, I still put in four or five hours, but…”

Since when is four hours of studying considered lazy? For me, being “lazy” before a test means sitting down at my desk to study, getting my notes about 3/8 of the way out of my backpack, saying to myself, “Ah, I know all this stuff,” even though I don’t, and then asking Matt, my roommate, if he wants to play Diablo 2 for the next 13 hours. He invariably accepts, because he never studies, either. I’m so glad my roommate isn’t hardworking and studious, or else I’d have to debowel myself out of pure shame.

Right now, Microsoft Word is telling me that “debowel” is not a word. But I know for a fact that it is. If you’re opening up another browser to visit www.dictionary.com to check me out on this, don’t bother. Dictionary.com doesn’t have the word. But the Oxford English Dictionary, which you can’t get to because you’re not on the Case network ha ha ha, does. “Debowel” is an obsolete synonym for “disembowel.”

I came to know about this obsolete word thanks to Kevin and Jim. Kevin and I were doing chem homework and Kevin suggested using de Broglie’s equation to solve a problem. Except he pronounced it “De Broje-lee-aaay” instead of the way it’s supposed to be pronounced, “De Brogg-lee.” I of course was left with no choice but to point out his mistake in a snide and haughty manner, and then call him a few derogatory names. Surely you understand. Rather than accept defeat, Kevin foolishly dug himself a deep ditch of denial and claimed that his pronunciation was correct.

To settle our disgustingly dumb dispute, we visited the OED and looked up the pronunciation of De Broglie. While I was laughing at Kevin and Kevin was bitterly sulking in agony, no doubt planning a hearty vengeance upon me, Jim studied my computer screen. The OED website has a column on the left where it shows the lexicographical neighbors of the word you just looked up, and one of the words there piqued Jim’s apathy. “’Debowel?’ Is that a real word?” he mused. We all ignored him. Then I closed the browser. Then Jim got mad at me and told me to open the up the browser again and see what “debowel” was. I didn’t really care, but I learned the hard way once that if you mess with Jim when he hasn’t had any sleep in a while, he will do bad things to you. Like shove you into Kevin’s closet against your will and then close the door so forcefully that when you try to stop it with your foot, your foot becomes crushed between the door and the floor, and then you’re stuck in the dark closet with a crushed foot, doomed for all eternity to gag on the vile fumes emanating from the dirty laundry that Kevin should have washed five weeks ago. True story. Anyway, since I wasn’t sure whether Jim had had any sleep recently, I decided to play it safe and open up the OED website for “de Broglie” again. Sure enough, there was “debowel,” and it turned out to indeed be a real word.

And the moral of this story is: I’m supposed to be writing an English paper tonight, but instead I’m posting this blog entry and then going to sleep.

.: posted by Boris 12:59 AM

Sunday, April 18, 2004

Online Wisdom: Part 5

It has been almost nine months (approximately the time it takes for a woman to poop a baby out after having sex) since the last Online Wisdom entry. The new text file has been stagnating for ages because I don’t get on AIM much anymore, so I figured I’d dump its contents for the world to see.

For those of you who are new, or may have forgotten: this is a collection of stupid stuff that people say to me online. I have taken the liberty of fixing typos and cutting out unnecessary bits, but you have my grave assurances that I haven’t fabricated anything. To show you what I mean, let’s look at the following nugget from Tim, in its original form:

The Great Tim: did u take shardule's penis test?

I like Tim, so before posting that statement into the blog entry, I might want to try to hide his base illiteracy. The finished version might look like this:

The Great Tim: did you take Shardule's penis test?

Here “u” became “you,” and I capitalized “Shardule” because it is a proper noun. (You generally want to capitalize those, Tim.) This kind of tomfoolerizing with a statement is okay. However, THIS kind of fiddlery is not:

The Great Tim: did you take Shardule's penis?

Here I have taken out the word “test” and created a completely different (albeit very funny) statement. Such editing is immoral and bad, and I promise not to indulge in it (although you must appreciate how sorely tempted I am at times). As usual, my comments are in parentheses next to the entry upon which they comment. With that, we begin:

Buffy4386: Boris, if you were a guy, what would you want to get your girlfriend?
(Ouch! Notice how cleverly she hides the vicious insult!)

Toxin1234: well Boris, one of my future roommates very much reminds me of you
Toxin1234: in terms of speaking style and content
Toxin1234: I am going to hate next year.

Ice man480: say hi to your roommate and the hooker for me if he can hear you over the loud music
(um…)

Auto response from fly197: following the cs department's advice about showering sometimes
(What?! Marina showers?? Surely this away message is a lie.)

fly197: my math prof used to teach at Harvard
fly197: did I tell you that? he's a Harvard hick

Auto response from chessmen15: I guess if you really want to get down to it from a logical perspective, my favorite animal is the elephant. They are big and friendly. But I also really like monkeys.
icetune02: Just so you know, elephants are NOT friendly creatures
icetune02: When we were in Africa they tried to surround our van, and then started closing in on us
icetune02: That is not friendly behavior
(Thank you, Steven, for ruthlessly slaughtering what little remained of my childhood innocence.)

slila22: yay for lysdexia

ChessMen15: I thought everybody here was an amateur hacker
GreenKnightF3: No, my friends and I are the only geniuses.

fly197: "CMU is like unprotected sex...it feels so good when you get in, but once you are there you wish you never came."
(CMU = Carnegie Mellon University = the university that Marina got into and I didn’t because she’s smart and I’m not)

(Good friends will always listen to you)
ChessMen15: for me, I need to have the psychological satisfaction of knowing that somebody is actually listening to and absorbing what I am complaining about
Buffy4386 signed off at 11:28:03 PM.

The Great Tim: What the hell is wrong with u Boris, u have a laptop for god's sake, take it with u, don't just leave it sitting in ur room on all day, thats such a waste of a laptop
The Great Tim: ok, i feel better now

Auto response from chessmen15: Doing my best not to procrastinate.
zipi197: it's Friday
zipi197: don’t worry about procrastination until Sunday night
(Sage words.)

Buffy4386: Does your computer beep?
Buffy4386: BEEP!
Buffy4386: Beep
Buffy4386: Beep
Buffy4386: Beep
Buffy4386: Beep
Buffy4386: Beeep
(Evidently it does now)

DontMinChenIt: well, here is how I see the problem: you should just let the Jewish fraternity kill you. That way we don’t have to dirty our hands and everyone's happy

Toxin1234: hey boarass
Toxin1234: hahah boarass.

Buffy4386: I like being allowed to kill myself with my own stupidity

Hepcat800: grammar are bad

DontMinChenIt: mmmmm elephants... I had that for dinner the other night

run stickle run: whats your last name
ChessMen15: Dvorkin
run stickle run: nice
run stickle run: how do you spell that
(Har!)

Auto response from chessmen15: Trying, trying so hard not waste this Saturday like I did the first two.
slila22: good job
(Lila loves me)

[same away message]
fly197: bor, its hopeless. you're gonna waste it
(Marina, obviously, does not)

Buffy4386: I need to clean my ears.

fly197: wow. I'm a waste of space.
(YES! From her own mouth, the truth — caught on tape!)

The Great Tim: he said his penis doubled as a tripod
The Great Tim: or a kick stand
(if I only remembered what on Earth we were talking about)

The Great Tim: did you take Shardule's penis test?
(Hmm...Tim seems to have some sort of strange fascination with penises)

Boris says: Dan, you are a sick, twisted freak
Boris says: :)
DanJ says: haha
DanJ says: darn tootin!

Auto response from chessmen15: That physics test was my BITCH. I OWNED that mo-fo. I took it for a RIDE. I anally raped it up the...okay, I think I'll stop there.
snobuny4ever: "anally raped it up the...." isn’t that redundant?
(True. Julie got me fair and square on that one)

Buffy4386: I have a hickie on my lips, can you believe it?

ChessMen15: let's hope that was a better hug than the ones I give in real life :-)
Buffy4386: What's wrong with the hugs you give in real life?
ChessMen15: I thought you said I gave bad hugs!
Buffy4386: Well, you do.
(Thanks, Mandy. Thanks a lot.)

ChessMen15: hey Mandy!
Buffy4386 signed off at 8:26:30 PM.

Auto response from fly197: the world does not start and stop at your convenience, you miserable piece of shit
(Whatever happened to the ideal that away messages should be happy, funny, and uplifting?)

NerdamI2k: and I don't think I would look good in a skirt
(Au contraire, Ro — I think it would suit you marvelously)

Buffy4386: Boris?
ChessMen15: yes?
Buffy4386: What state do you live in?
ChessMen15: Ohio, I think
Buffy4386: Right.
Buffy4386: That's what I thought
Buffy4386: Just checking

Buffy4386: Have I ever told you how much I hate this away message?
Auto response from chessmen15: There is a very good chance that if you IM me right now, you will get an away message saying that there is a very good chance that if you IM me right now, you will get an away message saying that there is a very good chance that if you IM me right now, you will get an away message saying that there is a very good chance that if you IM me right now, you will get an away message saying that there is a very good chance that if you IM me right now, you will get an away message saying that there is a very good chance that if you IM me right now, you will get an away message saying that there is a very good chance that if you IM me right now, you will get an away message which will make you thank god that there is a character limit.
Buffy4386: A lot.
Buffy4386: I hate it a lot
(Hee hee hee)

ChessMen15: shit!
ChessMen15: on a stick!
ChessMen15: with cheese!
fencingviolist: mmmmm . . .
(Yuck!)

snobuny4ever: and work on that sex

icetune02: BORIS!!
icetune02: You must have fallen off the face of the Earth
icetune02: I'm convinced
icetune02: somehow your away message keeps changing
icetune02: but clearly, you no longer exist
(Am I such a loser that when I take a break from AIM, people think I died?)

JimHeng: sorry, Kevin was trying to molest me
(Jim and Kevin are roommates)

slila22: you make me ill

Auto response from run stickle run: metaphor time: I feel like I'm playing Mastermind. You know, the game where you make the codes, except every time I guess wrong, I get kicked in the nutsack and all my old guesses get taken away.

(Lila definitely puts the “Wisdom” in “Online Wisdom”
slila22: now do you understand the truth of life?
ChessMen15: uh, no
ChessMen15: I wasn't aware the truth was in that book
slila22: "don't be a dumbass"
slila22: that's the truth

NerdamI2k: I got a nice new Dell (if you say ‘dude you got a dell’ I will put a warning on your ass)
ChessMen15: kool
ChessMen15: dude, you got a bell!
[At this point, Roger promptly warns me]
ChessMen15: hey!
ChessMen15: I didn't say Dell!
ChessMen15: I said bell
ChessMen15: you're mean!
NerdamI2k: sorry I'm slydexic
(Dyslexia makes you read letters out of order — mistaking a lowercase b for a capital D is called “stupidity,” you poop-head)

[now several people proceed to ask me why I’m warned]
wolfgirl1888: who warned u?
RagingRaptor mh2: what are you doing to deserve warnings?
fronomo530: who warned ya?
TheaVoluptas: So what's up with that warning level?

fronomo530: oh it was funny alright
ChessMen15: yup
fronomo530: and by funny I mean really stupid

fronomo530: let's say I have a hypothetical situation that's not at all hypothetical
fronomo530: would you think it would be a hypothetical if I told you it would be?
(Ummm…sure)

TheaVoluptas: What're you doing, Boris?
Auto response from chessmen15: Going for a walk.
TheaVoluptas: Going for a walk?
TheaVoluptas: (Hehe, see, this way it's like a real conversation!)
TheaVoluptas: How...walkish of you.
(Oh dear, she is BORED)

(Excellent interjection)
TheaVoluptas: Flipping blat, you monkey!

Bad Hair 17: I've very excited about my new math book
Bad Hair 17: :-)
ChessMen15: what's so exciting about a math book?
ChessMen15: is it, like, fruity and humorous?
Bad Hair 17: It's a book about MATH!!!

TheaVoluptas: I want you so bad
(True quote! Taken blatantly out of context…but a true quote nonetheless)

TheaVoluptas: "Every time a woman masturbates, God gives the world a puppy."
TheaVoluptas: "So please, think of the puppies."

slila22: because it sucks Boris.
slila22: it doesn't suck Boris. It sucks, Boris.
(Ahhh. I was beginning to wonder)

fly197: you're worthless
(Marina says this to me approximately 2122 times per hour when we hang out. I guess it figures she’d tell me once online, too)

Hepcat800: see? That’s what I’m talking about. You’re so negative all the time. I think we need to re-examine your aura and maybe think about doing some yoga exercises to clear out all the negative "wah" (that’s a technical term for "bad things")
ChessMen15: okay
ChessMen15: where do we start?
Hepcat800: okay, you sit on the floor with your legs crossed and your back straight and and you close your eyes, maybe put on some mood music like Batty White or something and you start chanting "wahwahwahwahwah" and so on until it all goes away
(Batty White = Barry White?)

fly197: do you know anything about deterministic finite-state automata?

(Kevin expresses his disapproval of Andy’s screen name)
fencingviolist: did your plans involve playing Soul Caliber, or are you talking to Hair girl or someone?
ChessMen15: badhair17?
fencingviolist: yeah
ChessMen15: yeah, I'm talking to him...
fencingviolist: that's a guy?!
ChessMen15: um...yes
fencingviolist: um . . .
fencingviolist: yeah
ChessMen15: what's wrong with that?
ChessMen15: when he was little, he had very unruly hair
fencingviolist: it has the word hair in it
fencingviolist: only girls are allowed to worry about hair
ChessMen15: he didn't worry
ChessMen15: he didn't care at all
ChessMen15: it was just a facet of his existence
fencingviolist: well, if he's a guy, it shouldn't even be that

Hepcat800: *Krak-Ka-Squish!!!!!!!!!!!!!!* (that’s your head being cracked)

(Fun times in a chat room with Ro and Marina)
NerdamI2k: do your farts smell like cinnamon, Marina?

(We end with the following example of Benjy’s marvelous genius:)
Ice man480: I'm on spring break now
ChessMen15: cool
ChessMen15: how's it so far?
Ice man480: good been playing some games online
Ice man480: did some kickboxing and gave the girl I was thinking about asking out a black eye
(Bravo, Benjy.)

And that about wraps things up. I hope you enjoyed this collection of online snippets, and I wonder whether there will ever be a Part Six. If you have finals coming up soon: good luck! And if you DON’T have finals coming up soon: ha ha ha, you have to be in school until JUNE, sucks to be you, ha ha ha.

.: posted by Boris 3:12 PM

Saturday, February 14, 2004

Poke the Bunny

Last Thursday I had a physics lab report due, so you can guess what my Wednesday was like. Or maybe you can’t. In that case, I will tell you—it was an absolute joy! I just love writing lab reports! Especially when I have a cold and have to wipe the snot leaking out of my nose every five seconds in addition to the brain leaking out of my ears! Loads of fun, last Wednesday was.

At some point in the evening, I was having WAY too much fun writing this report and decided I needed a breather. I took a gander at Big Ben’s SubProfile, which is pretty witty, and at the bottom of his links section I saw a link titled, “Poke!” This intrigued me, so I gave it a click. The click took me to a web page with a purple background and a bunny sitting in the middle. Hovering in the air above and to the right of the bunny was a gloved hand with an outstretched index finger pointing at the bunny, and below the bunny was a round button labeled, simply, “POKE THE BUNNY.” There wasn’t a whole heck of a lot to do at this website, so I gathered my courage and clicked on the button.

You can probably guess what didn’t happen—my computer did not implode, nor did fairy cows fall from the sky and crash through my roof, although that would have been kind of cool and did in fact happen here, minus the fairy cows. The hand moved swiftly downward and—get ready for this—poked the bunny. When I clicked on the button again, the hand poked the bunny again. This was clearly one of the dumbest websites ever made, so naturally I thought it was the coolest thing on the planet. I was poking away at the poor rabbit when suddenly I heard:

“What the fuck?” It was my roommate, Matt.

“Poke the bunny!” I exclaimed. “You click on the button, and it pokes the bunny!”

“Yeah…I see that, but…” I could tell right away that Matt was excited.

“Is that all it does?” he eventually asked.

“No,” I said jubilantly. “It also makes a sound.” I turned up the volume so that Matt could hear. Indeed, when I jabbed the bunny, it sounded like a boxer jabbing at a punching bag.

“Look, you see how the bunny nudges when you poke him?” I continued. The forward nudge was very subtle and slight, but supremely implemented, I thought.

“Um…okay.” Clearly Matt was just as impressed as I was.

“And look how realistic this is!” My fascination was endless. “When you click the button fast, it makes a different sound than when you click it down and hold it.” A fast click made the jabbing sound described before; a slow click resulted in the jab sound plus the sound of deflating air. In hindsight, I’m not entirely sure why the bunny had an air leak, but it made perfect sense at the time. I demonstrated the difference between the two sounds to Matt and proceeded to pound out some mega-cool beats: fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh-fuhhhhhhhh, fuh-fuh, fuh-fuhhhhhhhh; fuh-fuh, fuh-fuhfuhfuhfuh fuhfuhfuhfuh-fuhhhhhhhh…

“No,” my roommate said, “if it was truly realistic, then the bunny would turn around and bite the—“

My computer interrupted Matt with a loud CHOMP! When we looked at the screen to see what had caused the sound, we saw that the previously placid picture was now replaced by a dark and grisly scene. The gloved hand was still hovering in the air, but the index finger was no longer peacefully pointing at the bunny from afar. It was in the bunny’s mouth. The rabbit no longer looked cute and peaceful; his ears were pressed back flat against his back and the squint in his eye gave him a chillingly evil look. The “POKE THE BUNNY” button was still there, but clicking on it did not make the finger poke the bunny. Ohhhh no. Those happy days were gone. A click on the button did not produce any poking. Instead it made the bunny tug at the finger in his mouth, as if trying to rip it clean off.

I could not believe my eyes. Here is my roommate, joking around that the bunny should turn around and chomp on the finger, and then the bunny actually gets pissed off and does it!

“Have you seen this website before??” I accused Matt in puzzled bewilderment.

“No, I swear!” he exclaimed, and we both fell apart in spasms of uncontrollable laughter. I hope nobody saw this.

Then the moment was gone. Our room returned to the state in which you are most likely to find it at any given moment: me and Matt sitting at our respective desks, each of us with headphones on, our backs to each other, intently focused at our respective computers. On this particular Wednesday, Matt went back to watching Stargate, the TV show. He’s become obsessed with it and downloads every episode off the wonderful Case network. I, for my part, returned to the dreary physics lab and fired up my usual jazz playlist. It’s not that I like to have ambient music; in fact, I vastly prefer working in silence. But I figure it’s better to listen to my own music than to the shitty gangster rap/boy band combo that some of the fuckheads on our floor blast all day at ear-damaging decibel levels.

In other words, our room became the crappy, boring thing it always is. My roommate eventually finished his Stargate episode and I eventually finished my lab report, and I think both of us were thankful for the happy moment that happened in between.

You, too, can poke the bunny.

.: posted by Boris 3:18 PM

Monday, February 09, 2004

Pathetic Excuse for a Nightmare

Last night I dreamt that it was already next August, and my dream began on the first day of classes. My first class was chemistry, which I knew was in Schmitt lecture hall. I’m not sure why I was in chemistry class—I’m taking it this semester, and come May I will be done with science forever, but maybe in my dream I failed the class and had to retake it. The dream didn’t specify. In any case, I sat near two of my friends from Pierce—Nicole and Meredith—and after the class was over I followed them to math, which we all had together.

The dream started to go a little weird after math class ended. I wasn’t entirely clear on where I had to go next, so I followed Nicole to her next class. She was quiet and sullen and made it blatantly evident that she had no desire whatsoever to talk to me, which made me sad.

“So, what class do you have now?” I asked, as cheerfully as I could.

“Philosophy,” Nicole said in a perfect monotone.

“Ah!” I exclaimed, trying in vain to revive the dying conversation. “You must be taking a really advanced class. It’s 300- or 200-level, right?”

I forget what her answer was, but we soon parted ways and I wondered why she seemed to be so angry at me. Then I focused my attention on a more pressing problem, which was that I had absolutely no idea where or what the hell my next class was. Somehow I ran into Meredith, who said she had to fix a scheduling problem. I had a scheduling problem, too, which was namely that I did not know what on Earth my schedule was. What a I needed to do was find a computer with an internet connection so that I could download a copy of my schedule, and since Meredith also needed a computer to fix her scheduling problem, we both went to the library to use the computers there.

At the library, things got bad. Meredith’s scheduling problem was very minor and she immediately set about fixing it, but I suddenly realized that I not only did not know what my schedule was, but that I did not, in fact, have a schedule at all. It became clear to me that the whole class registration thing had somehow passed me by. I simply hadn’t signed up for a single class. I had gone to chemistry and math class because I knew where they were and some of my friends were also taking them, but I wasn’t actually registered for either one. So for me it was more than just a matter of downloading a schedule; I had to make one.

Well, that’s not so hard to do. At Case there is an online registration system called SOLAR, which stands for “Shitty Old Lousy-Ass Registration” because it’s painful and buggy and laggy and usually doesn’t even work at all. But let’s pretend that it worked marvelously in my dream. All I had to do was log on (I was already at a computer) and sign up for all of my classes, and then I’d be set!

Except…I couldn’t log on. Every student needs to input a 4-character pin to log into the system, and even if I could remember my pin, it would do me no good because they’re changed every semester. Students have to meet or at least email their advisors in order to get their new pins, which I of course hadn’t done in my dream because I hadn’t bothered to try signing up for classes. This is where the nightmare ended—me, panic-stricken in the library, wondering how soon I’d be able to reach my advisor and get the pin, scared breathless that I’d end up skipping my first day of classes.

When I was little, the few nightmares I had usually involved either falling to my death from a great height or trying desperately to escape some very bad person bent on killing me. I also had less graphic nightmares wherein a common theme was my having to constantly struggle for sight or for breath or both. Those nightmares were cool and scary. But what is my greatest fear now? That I won’t know my SOLAR pin and find myself unable to register for classes? That, heaven forbid, I’ll have to cut the first day of lectures? Oh, the terror. I can’t believe that this crap is the scariest thing my brain can come up with. School should never, ever, be the subject of a nightmare!

I hope that I soon get a dream where I’m drowning in boiling lava or being chased through a maze by a rapier-wielding giant rock monster, or basically anything scary and exciting, because that last dream was pathetic.